Der Emil
DoomsdaysCWOriginal #Catfluencer: How a Victorian Artist’s Feline Fixation Gave Us the #InternetCat
Louis Wain—an illustrator who boosted the popularity of cats at the turn of the 20th century—birthed memes a century after his most active decades.
by Lisa Hix
"[W]hen 23-year-old Louis Wain and his new wife brought a black-and-white kitten that they named Peter into their home in 1883, it was still an unconventional, but not completely outrageous, choice.
“Louis Wain wrote in 1909: ‘When I first took to drawing and painting [cats] they were treated as despised animals, looked on as vermin by sportsmen. … The man who would take an interest in the cat movement was looked upon as effeminate.’”
